Things got bad for Nicoletti when his close associate and former boss Sam Battaglia also died on September 7, 1973 of cancer at the age of 64. The handpicked successor of Sam Gaincana died as a broken man because during his stay in prison, his wife Angela and his second son Sam Jr. both died of heart attacks. It was a terrible tragedy and it was also an example of the bad karma that surrounds these people. Also in July, 1974 Nicoletti’s exiled boss Sam Giancana was deported by the Mexican government under the pressure of the U.S. The Mexican authorities entered Sam's estate San Cristobal and deported him back home. On December 17, 1974 Giancana was brought before a federal grand jury to testify about the CIA plot to assassinate the Cuban leader Fidel Castro that occurred in the 1960’s. Accardo couldn’t stand these daily pressures no more so he and Aiuppa gave an order for the problem to be solved Mafia style. On June 19, 1975, Giancana was murdered in the basement kitchen of his Oak Park home with 6 shots from a .22 in his head. Allegedly the killer was one of Sam’s closest associates, Dominic “Butch” Blasi. Later none of his gangster friends showed up at the funeral, not even Nicoletti. Most of his closest friends in the Outfit avoided his funeral because of the huge number of reporters and FBI agents that were present at the time. On June 24 and September 22, 1975 Johnny Roselli was called to testify before the 1975 U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence also about the CIA plot to kill Castro. Again on April 23, 1976 Roselli was called before the committee to testify but this time for the alleged conspiracy to kill President Kennedy back in 1963. Three months after his first round of testimony on the Kennedy assassination, the Committee wanted to recall Roselli but it was too late. The mob had gotten to Roselli first because on August 9, 1976, Roselli's chopped up and decomposing body was found in a 55-gallon steel fuel drum floating in Dumfoundling Bay near Miami, Florida. By 1976 most members of the old Taylor Street Crew were gone and the remaining members like Chuck English, Butch Blasi and Marshal Caifano had no choice but to accept the new administration and got mixed with the other remaining crews around Chicago.
After Giancana’s death Joey Aiuppa became the boss of the Chicago crime syndicate and his second in command was Jack Cerone. Accardo took the position as elder statesman for the mob or top advisor and Gus Alex remained as boss of the non-Italian faction and their prime fixer. So one day Accardo sent a message to Alex to get back to Chicago immediately because there was some trouble going on among the Outfit’s members. One of the problems was the drastic diminished income from bookmaking and loansharking, and most of the remaining illegal operations were overtaken by the new administration. So guys like Nicoletti still didn’t thought about retirement. He was looking to find new ways to make the quick buck and the only racket that left for him was narcotics. Nicoletti knew that if the Outfit doesn’t get generally involved in drugs, someone else like the Hispanics or blacks will take it. Nicoletti also knew that by now most of the bosses stashed their millions so they didn’t need any narcotics businesses around them. Nicoletti was a gangster to the core so he didn’t think about the rules that were given by his superiors and stuff like that. When Alex came back from his home in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, he was very angry. Accardo explained to him that some of the old big shots like Nicoletti are spreading influence over the younger generations about getting involved in narcotics. That’s when Alex and Nicoletti entered a feud over the narcotics racket. Alex and Accardo were against it but Aiuppa stayed open minded. Through Aiuppa, Nicoletti hoped to change the resistance from Accardo and Alex to enter in the drugs operations. Many of the members like Lenny Patrick supported Nicoletti and his desire to supplement their income. But in the end the Outfit’s boss Aiuppa turned his back at Nicoletti and has gone along with Accardo and Alex in refusing to give that faction consent to become involved. This decision brought much higher hatred and rivalry between Alex and Nicoletti.
Gus Alex
By 1977, most of Nicoletti’s illegal rackets faded away. He was 61 years old, with grey hair but even with his age he still had the physical condition for any job. He had a legitimate business which was the Metropolitan Burial Vault Company at 1325 Main Street in Melrose Park. He constantly helped his workers like driving and loading the trucks. During this period Nicoletti started having chest pains so he decided to visit his doctor. Nicoletti was devastated because the doctors diagnosed him with a metastatic lung cancer and they advised him that he had only five months left to enjoy his life. Nicoletti always thought that he was going to end up shot to death on the streets of Chicago like a real gangster. But that’s life and that’s one of the main moments when he thought about retiring from the mob. Also one day he was visited by FBI agents regarding the slayings of Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli. He told the agents that he never knew Roselli but his name was familiar to him only from the latest news coverage regarding Rosellis murder. When he was asked about Giancana, Nicoletti told the agents that he was an old friend but didn’t have any comment about the murder. He also told the agents that he was struggling by trying to make a buck from his legitimate business. In the end Nicoletti commented that “crime does not pay today”. Than Nicoletti was asked if crime paid in the past years but he only shrugged his shoulders and with a grin on his face said “I don’t know”.
One of the last photos of Nicoletti
On March 28, 1977 the House Select Committee on Assassinations wanted to question Nicoletti about his alleged involvement in the JFK assassination. The House investigators were tipped off by an ex-Outfit associate, turned informant, by the name of Chuckie Crimaldi. So the investigators immediately began to arrange an interview with Nicoletti. They hoped that Nicoletti could supply them with information about Jack Ruby’s mob connections and the CIA/Mob operations. Also the investigators came to information that Nicoletti was recruited by Roselli and Giancana to work on the map logistics in the murder plot against Fidel Castro. Nicoletti wasn’t aware of the situation but some his “friends” in the Outfit like Gus Alex that had connections in high places were tipped off about the investigation. On March 29, 1977, Nicoletti received a phone call from someone to meet him/them at the parking lot of the Golden Horns Restaurant in suburban Northlake, Illinois. The unknown person/persons met with Nicoletti in his 1976 Oldsmobile. According to some police reports, one person sat on the front seat next to Nicoletti and other person sat on the back seat. Than, the person on the back seat pulled out a gun and shot Nicoletti three times in the back of the head with .38 caliber slugs at point-blank range. As his body leaned forward to the driving wheel, his foot apparently stuck on the accelerator, overheating the engine, thus setting the car on fire. There’s also another story that Nicoletti was in a high speed chase and was caught up at the parking lot of the restaurant. He was trapped by the parked cars on lot where he attempted to flee the hitmen. Some investigators said that one of the hitmen firebombed Nicoletti’s car while the other one did the shooting. Anyways, some of the people that were passing by the restaurant saw the fire and called the cops. Than the police pulled Nicoletti out of the car and he was still alive but with no consciousness and was taken to the intensive care unit at the Northlake Community Hospital. Nicoletti died 6 hours later.
Nicoletti’s grave
Nicoletti’s murder was an obvious mob hit but the question remains “Who did it and why?” My opinion is that the hit came obviously from the Outfit’s top echelon because none of the younger criminals had the courage to do this on their own. Nicoletti spent all of his life planning hits and executing people, so it wasn’t an easy job to get him. But again the question remains, who pulled the strings and pushed for Nicoletti’s death? My personal pick is Gus Alex. My explanation is simple because there was a long time feud between the two of them. One of the problems was the narcotics business, which Alex despised, and maybe the second problem was Alex being one of the bosses of the ruling panel, the position Nicoletti maybe thought it belonged to him. So when the investigation on the JFK assassination began, Alex used the right moment at the right time. Two men are suspected of being involved in Nicoletti’s death, Frank Schweihs and Harry Aleman, two trusted members of Nicoletti’s hit team. Or maybe Nicoletti pushed for a suicidal mission?! Maybe he didn’t want to suffer from the cancer that he developed, so he granted his own wish about getting shot on the street?! Anyway his murder remains unsolved.
After Nicoletti’s death, many conspiracy theories surfaced around Chicago and the U.S. One theory was that Nicoletti had harsh quarrels with his superiors about the CIA taking over their international illegal operations, like smuggling narcotics and white slavery. Next theory was that he was willing to talk to the government about his involvement in the Castro plot and the Kennedy assassination. And because of the murders of Richard Cain, Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli, who all were involved in the CIA operations, some theorists also believed that the CIA was responsible or influenced on the decision for their deaths and the death of Nicoletti. This theory came to surface when some people that allegedly were involved in the Kennedy assassination allegedly committed suicides or died suddenly and unbelievably fast from cancer or other diseases.
Even 15 years after his death, Nicoletti still made the headlines. In 1992 Charles Giancana, the brother of Sam, and his nephew Sam Jr. published their book, Double Cross, which was mostly about Sam Giancana’s life time. In their book they claim that Richard Cain, along with Charles Nicoletti, were the two gunman who killed President John F. Kennedy. Than in 1994 James Earl Files a.k.a. James Sutton, who is serving a 50 year prison term at the Danville Correctional Center in Danville, Illinois, for the attempted murder of two police officers, stated in an interview that allegedly he and Nicoletti were the shooters in the assassination of Kennedy. So with these kinds of stories, true or false, Nicoletti’s legend grew even further. In the end I want to say this…Charles Nicoletti was truly a Mafioso who destroyed the lives of many people and families and in the end was undone by the same tactics and violence that he used in all of his life time. He killed his own father to protect his own family and later continued to kill just to protect his other family, which was the Chicago Outfit. He’s remembered in history as one of the best serial killers for the mob. With all of the blood that was shed on the streets of Chicago, Nicoletti was never charged on any of the murders that he committed. He never snitched or turned his back to anyone in the organization, he was very loyal to his superiors and made a lot of money but I’m going to take a quote from one famous mob researcher and that is, if there’s a special hell reserved for the mafia, than people like Charles Nicolleti deserve one of the most excruciating places in that hell. The End
This article is completed from various FBI files, newspaper clippings, articles and other various infos that can be found on the internet.
